About Me

Known principally for his weekly political columns and his commentaries on radio and television, Chris Trotter has spent most of his adult life either engaging in or writing about politics. He was the founding editor of The New Zealand Political Review (1992-2005) and in 2007 authored No Left Turn, a political history of New Zealand. Living in Auckland with his wife and daughter, Chris describes himself as an “Old New Zealander” – i.e. someone who remembers what the country was like before Rogernomics. He has created this blog as an archive for his published work and an outlet for his more elegiac musings. It takes its name from Bowalley Road, which runs past the North Otago farm where he spent the first nine years of his life. Enjoy.

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The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.These are based on two very simple principles:Courtesy and Respect.Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.

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Monday, 23 November 2009

Palestine: The Kiwi Connection

Kiwi Crusaders: Images of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles campaign in Palestine, 1917-19. (Photomontage by the NZMR Association)

Following TVNZ's account of the so-called "Surafend Massacre", which was broadcast on the Sunday programme of 22 November, I've been moved to post this "docu-drama" style account of the event written by myself back in January, shortly after the Israeli incursion into Gaza.

THE WAR WAS OVER. On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, 1918, the fighting ceased. For the men of the New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron, and all the other troopers of the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade encamped among the barren sandhills of central Palestine, that single fact was all that mattered.

But, as the weeks passed, the war’s end, while obviously a source of immense relief, had also become the cause of intense frustration. Now that their job was done; now that the killing had stopped; now that they had survived; all these men wanted to do was go home.

WHEN TROOPER Leslie Lowry pulled his kit-bag under his head on the night of 9 December 1918 it was to home that his thoughts inevitably wandered. Wrapped in his blanket to ward off the late autumn chill, he lay motionless beneath the low canvass ceiling of his tent thinking of New Zealand until, lulled by the companionable snorting of the tethered horses, he drifted off to sleep.

An hour later he awoke with a start to feel his kit-bag/pillow being unceremoniously yanked from under his head. He scrambled out of the tent, stumbling in the sand as he pulled on his trousers, and shouting at the top of his voice to the men on sentry duty:

"Stop him! Stop that little bastard – he’s stolen my kit-bag!"

The thief was clearly visible in the moonlight, weaving in and out of the thorn bushes that dotted the sandhills.

Trooper Lowry had always been a good runner and he proved it now by sprinting after his quarry like a huntaway. Within seconds he’d caught up with the man who’d stolen his property.

"You give that back – you thieving little swine!"

For a moment the New Zealander and the Palestinian faced each other, breathing heavily. In the distance both of them could hear the shouts of the alerted sentries and the alarmed whinnying of the horses.

"Come on mate," said Lowry, speaking in what he hoped was a more reasonable tone, "you’re not going anywhere. Hand it over."

The Palestinian said nothing. Instead, he reached into the folds of his caftan and pulled out a heavy Webly revolver, retrieved six months earlier from the corpse of a British officer. Pointing it at the New Zealander’s chest – he fired.

Lowry sank slowly to his knees, hands fluttering uselessly as blood spouted from the neat little hole in his chest, pouring out through his fingers and down over his bare stomach. Without a word he toppled over onto his side, an awkward, quivering bundle in the cold sand.

The Palestinian turned and ran off into the darkness.

THE NEWS of trooper Lowry’s death spread rapidly – and its effect was devastating. For a man to have come through everything the NZ Mounted Rifles had endured, only to be murdered by an Arab thief just weeks before sailing for home, was almost too much for his comrades to bear.

"He was unarmed for Christ’s sake! The thief must have seen that. What kind of man calmly shoots an unarmed kid, at point-blank range, for the sake of a bloody kit-bag?"

"We’re not going to take this lying down – I don’t care what the Heads say. This is too bloody much. Come on you blokes, it should be easy enough to track the bastard through all this sand. Look! – there are his footprints!

"You three, go back and round up the rest of the Squadron – and see if you can get some of the Aussies from the Light Horse to join us. We’re going to track this murdering bastard back to the hole he came from and cork it up tight. Make sure he’s still there in the morning when the Red-Caps arrive."

The thief’s footprints led the New Zealanders and their Australian allies across the sand to the nearby Palestinian village of Surafend. Within the hour they had set up a tight military cordon around the cluster of stone houses: no one was permitted to enter or leave.

"I’ve heard about this damned place", muttered one of the troopers, "those Jews from down the road at Rishon LeZion are certain that most of the attacks on their settlements come from this village. I reckon these Palestinian Arabs hate Johnny Jew more than they do Johnny Turk."

"Yeah, well it’s no secret that Lawrence and his Arab friends were none too fussy about abiding by the ‘Rules of War’. From what I hear they travelled pretty light – if you know what I mean."

"No prisoners?"

"Exactly."

"Rules of bloody war – that’s a good one. Killing’s a dirty business, and the only rule I know of that rings true is: get the other fellow before he gets you."

"And look after your mates."

"Yeah, that’s right – and look after your mates."

"Ah, but we’re supposed to be following in the footsteps of the Crusaders. Remember what that little chap from Rishon LeZion said to old Meldrum at the anniversary of the Battle of Ayun Kara?"

The address of the Mayor of the little Jewish settlement was intended to be memorable. Indeed, the entire population of Rishon LeZion ("The First of Zion") had been marched out to the nearby battlefield to hear it. Standing in front of the little obelisk his people had erected to mark where the fallen of the NZ Mounted Rifle Brigade lay buried, the Jewish leader offered verbal tribute to Brigadier-General William Meldrum and his men.

These dead have not only fought for their country, they have planted the flag of justice and lit the torch of liberty. Its light will never be extinguished. You have placed marking stones along the route to the future. These markers, formed by your tombs, will cause those who come after to meditate: ‘It is just about a thousand years’ they will say, ‘since, on this very soil, Western lords came with the sacred flame of religion and in the name of the Cross to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel. And now, after long delay, these same children of the West have come again in their thousands, glowing with ardour, animated by the thirst for liberty, justice, and fraternity, to liberate the same country from the yoke it has borne for nearly five centuries.’

THE MORNING LIGHT came slanting down into the village of Surafend and illuminated the faces of the New Zealand and Australian troopers encircling it. But the rising sun brought no Military Police. Indeed, having being informed of the murder of Trooper Lowry and the situation at Surafend by the Australian and New Zealand Divisional Commander, Major-General Edward Chaytor, General Headquarters had peremptorily ordered the cordon lifted. There would be no official investigation, no Red Caps, no arrests. By the afternoon of 10 December all the troopers who had surrounded Surafend were back behind their tent-lines, allowing a steady stream of Palestinian men to make their way out of the village without hindrance.

Trooper Lowry’s comrades were furious.

"I don’t believe this – I simply don’t believe this! How can the bloody British just sit there, knowing that a soldier of the Empire has been murdered, and do nothing about it?"

"You know the Heads. There’ll be some behind-the-scenes skulduggery between the British and that Arab king Lawrence has been squiring around. The last thing they want is any ‘unpleasantness’ – nothing to upset the ‘delicate diplomacy’ between His Majesty’s Government and the leaders of the Arab tribes. What’s one Kiwi digger’s life compared to ‘the future of the Middle East?’"

"It’s just like that bloody fiasco at Ain Es Sir – remember? When our lot were sent back to help the Circassians and the ungrateful little bastards ambushed us. Nobody did anything about the men they killed there either."

"Well that’s not going to happen this time. I’ve been talking to the men. They’re ready to do something on their own. And there’s a swag of blokes in the Light Horse who’ll join us. The Aussies are as sick of this turning a blind eye to theft and murder as we are. I hear there’s even a few Brits willing to their bit."

"Do what?"

"We’re going to pay the village of Surafend a little visit. And if they refuse to hand over the bastard who shot Les, we’ll administer some justice of our own – ANZAC-style."

THERE WAS FEAR in the eyes of the women, children and old men of Surafend as they were assembled in front of the village well. These strange men from distant lands said little, but their gestures were clear enough. Holding the pick-axe handles they were carrying with both hands, they pushed and prodded the little huddle in the direction they wanted them to travel – out of the village and up into the sandhills. One of the old men pleaded with his grim shepherds.

"We are friends," he cried in heavily accented English, "friends of the British."

"You may be friends of the bloody British," hissed one of the troopers, pushing the old man back into the huddle, "but you’re no bloody friends of ours."

"Keep them well back!" Someone shouted. "Well back."

From the crest of the big sandhill overlooking Surafend, the little huddle watched as around 200 troopers closed in on their homes. In addition to pick-axe handles, the New Zealanders and Australians were armed with the heavy, canvass-sheathed chains used to haul supply wagons and field guns. They were eerily silent, and the expressions their faces wore were hard – very hard.

"We want the man who shot Trooper Leslie Lowry." The leader of the troopers was speaking slowly and very clearly to the village headman. "We tracked him to this village. If he’s not here, we want to know where we can find him. Lead us to him, now, and nothing will happen to you and your people. Refuse, and …." The trooper cast a meaningful glance at the mute formation drawn up behind him.

The Palestinian looked into the eyes of the New Zealander standing before him. Neither man moved a muscle. Then, drawing himself up to his full height, the headman leaned forward to within a few inches of the New Zealander’s face, and speaking in a clear voice so all the men of his village could hear, he said:

"Get your infidel dogs out of my village!"

And spat in the trooper’s face.

A roar, deep and guttural, leapt from the throats of all the men present, and both sides lunged towards the other. The troopers swung their pick-axe handles high and brought them down with deadly force. The heavy chains hissed and whistled. The air was filled with the sickening sound of wood and metal connecting with human bone and tissue. Men screamed, fell, and lay still, but still the Palestinians continued to hurl themselves upon the troopers.

"Allahu Akbar! They cried. "God is Great!"

"Get them! Get the bastards!" Shouted the troopers.

From a distance it was all-too-clear how the fight would end. The villagers were outnumbered and the troopers superior training and discipline easily overcame their furious resistance. Slowly, methodically, the New Zealanders and the Australians beat and beat and beat. The pick-axe handles rising and falling like some vast threshing machine.

Soon the village was ablaze. The contents of the stone-walled houses burned fiercely, bathing the whole scene in a lurid glow. As their men fell, the women up on the sandhill began a high keening. The children, seeing the fathers and brothers being beaten to death, sobbed uncontrollably.

By the time the troopers tired of their grim sport, forty Palestinian men lay dead or wounded on the bloody sand. As the rising wind swirled the smoke and cinders into the night sky, the New Zealanders and Australians formed up in ranks and, without a backward glance, marched out into the darkness of the sandhills.

The village of Surafend had ceased to exist.

NO NEW ZEALAND or Australian soldier was ever charged as a result of the so-called "Surafend Massacre". The British High Command was furious at what could only be considered a diplomatic disaster in terms of the British Empire’s relations with the Arab peoples.

The borders of the Middle East were in the process of being redrawn, and the gentlemen at the Foreign and Colonial Office in London were determined that this process should not rebound to the Empire’s disadvantage.

There can be little doubt that the military authorities would very much have liked to punish the ringleaders, but the troopers and the junior officers of the NZ Mounted Rifles and the Australian Light Horse closed ranks against all investigation.

In the end it was left to the British Commander-in-Chief, Major-General Edmund Allenby, to state the views of His Majesty’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Forming the ANZAC’s into a hollow square he unleashed a tongue-lashing the like of which no British or Empire troops had heard for many, many years:

"I was proud of you as brave soldiers but now I am ashamed of you as cold-blooded murderers."

This outburst aroused such mutinous resentment among the New Zealand and Australian troops that Allenby was soon forced to retract his words.

It was a necessary concession because with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the US President, Woodrow Wilson’s, promise of "self-determination" for the world’s subject peoples, the British soon had their hands full keeping the Arab population of the region from breaking out into full scale rebellion. In this task the brutal reputation of the Australian and New Zealand troopers rode before them, striking fear into the hearts of the Arab population wherever they appeared.

BUT THE JEWISH SETTLERS of Rishon LeZion had no reason to fear the ANZAC’s. On the contrary they warmed to their example. It is easy to imagine the scene as the NZ Mounted Rifle Brigade saddled up and rode away south: the thoughtful expressions on the faces of the young Jewish settlers as the long column of horsemen passed through their little town.

"God-speed to your little country at the end of the world!", they cried, "and thank you for teaching us about the rules of war!"

"Oh yes," a veteran trooper shouted back, grinning at the young men over his shoulder, "and what might they be?"

"Get the other fellow before he gets you, and always look after your mates."

The trooper’s wry laughter was quickly lost in the swirling clouds of dust kicked up by the column’s multitude of hooves.

2 comments:

Entertaining story and glad that it is couched in the terms of fiction. The use of The iconic photograph of Pte Wood, 1st Australian Light Horse Regiment [see http://alh-research.tripod.com/Light_Horse/index.blog?topic_id=1105005] who died at Gallipoli and thus not participating at any time in the Palestine Campaign adds to the conclusion that the thoughts were fictional.

It is the subtext of the piece that is of some concern and needs to be examined. The subtext of the story makes the intent very clear. It was the Enzeds who practised the concept of collective punishment upon a group of hapless Arabs in Palestine, which the men who participated in the massacre at Surafend did.

Segue to the Israeli action in Gaza at the beginning of last year. The descendants of Richon de Zion found logic in this solution of collective punishment and so because of the Enzed example, the state of Israel today has perfected the Kiwi idea. It is a preposterous slander. If we follow this logic, let us listen to the Israeli Cabinet meeting which approved the strike into Gaza.

"Those rockets from Hamas are still landing in the settlements causing damage."

"What can we do about them?"

"Ahhh," said the Minister of Defence, "Remember the wonderful example of the NZMR at Surafend!"

Mumble mumble rhubarb rhubarb and more mumble.

"Yes that's it. Those Kiwi's certainly showed those Arabs a thing or two."

"So let's burn down Surafend. That will teach them."

"Hear hear! Hear hear!"

"Hang on mates," said the Minister for Culture, "one problem here. The village was burnt down long ago and none exists there today."

Mumble mumble rhubarb rhubarb and more mumble this time mentioning Surafend over and over again.

"I've got it!" exclaimed the Minister for Education. "Let's surround Gaza and then demand the village leader surrenders all the rocket men who are burning out their fuses up here alone. If they don't, we'll remove all the women and children and then belt the men over the heads with clubs like our wonderful Kiwi's did. That will teach them."

"Ah to hell with that, just use a few phosphorous shell rounds. That will burn them out anyway, just the the Kiwi's did at Surafend."

"Yeah. Those Kiwis are such an inspiration to our country. We never do anything unless we have the Kiwi seal of approval. Instead of What Would Jesus Have Done, we say, What Would the NZ Mounted Rifles have done!"

"Hear hear! Hear hear!"

"Let's do it tomorrow."

"That's what the Kiwis would have done."

And so my friends, that is how the Israeli cabinet makes all its decisions.

First of all, Bill, I'd like to thank you for pointing out the error of attribution in this posting's original accompanying photograph. It was chosen in good faith from a series of photographs purporting to be of the NZ Mounted Rifles in Palestine in 1918 - hence the original caption.

I have, as you can now see, replaced the photograph of Private Wood with a photomontage put together by the NZMR Association.

As for the rest of your commentary: well, I think the kindest response I can make is that it shows you to be an expert crafter of straw men.

My purpose in writing the piece was to make the rather obvious point that the Israeli Defence Force is not the only army in the world to have carried out the collective punishment of civilians.

I thought it an appropriate moment (I was writing at the time of the Israeli incursion into Gaza) to remind New Zealanders, who often adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards international conflict, that our own soldiers were not above massacring civilians.

What I also hoped to show was how otherwise decent men can be led to behave in the most brutal and immoral fashion. And how the intense bonds that grow up between soldiers in the field can distort their reasoning, and, finally, how the brutal realities of war tend to produce a de facto code of conduct radically at odds with the official expectations of those in command.

What I was definitely NOT attempting to do was to draw a direct link between the Surafend Massacre and Operation Cast Lead.

Had that been my intent your scorn would have been well-merited. But, since it was not (and since I'm confident you knew it was not) I have to conclude that you were simply indulging yourself by unleashing a volley of cheap shots.

What I will hold my hand up to, however, is a strong belief that what happens in a particular time and place can cast a very long shadow.

The Jewish settlers at Rishon LeZion, who were moved to honour the NZMR troopers who fell at the battle of Ayun Kara with their own memorial obelisk, would undoubtedly also have remembered their subsequent action at Surafend - and drawn from it whatever lessons they felt it had to teach them.